Last year's science Top 10 unveiled

China's 10 top scientific advances of 2021 were unveiled on Monday by the High Technology Research and Development Center.

The 10 were selected from 310 scientific achievements suggested by scientific journals. The center made its preliminary selection in December, choosing 30 projects completed between Dec 1, 2020 and Nov 30, 2021, and were then put to vote by 3,500 experts and scholars before being whittled down to the top 10.

They include the landing of Mars probe Tianwen-1, the launches of the Tiangong space station's Tianhe core module and the Shenzhou XII and XIII manned spacecraft, and their docking with the station, the artificial synthesis of starch from carbon dioxide, the Chang'e-5 lunar samples for their insight into lunar evolution, the Five-Hundred-Meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope reporting the largest set of fast radio bursts ever detected, a self-powered soft robot reaching the bottom of the Mariana Trench, and the discovery of a key gene associated with long-distance avian migration.

This was the 17th such roundup of events by the Ministry of Science and Technology's High Technology Research and Development Center, which aim to promote and popularize progress in essential research, and create a wider appreciation of science.